Hurricane Katrina

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times

Updated: Sept. 25, 2012

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast with devastating force at daybreak on Aug. 29, 2005, pummeling a region that included the fabled city of New Orleans and heaping damage on neighboring Mississippi. In all, more than 1,700 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of others displaced.

Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane’s storm surge — a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast — was the highest ever measured in the United States. Levees failed in New Orleans, resulting in political and social upheavals that continued a half decade later.

Katrina ranks as one of the most punishing hurricanes ever to hit the United States. Damage, costing billions of dollars, has made it one of the costliest storms on record. In New Orleans, floodwaters from the breached levee rose to rooftops in the poorest neighborhood, and in many areas residents were rescued from roofs of homes that became uninhabitable. The hurricane’s howling winds stripped 15-foot sections off the roof of the Superdome, where as many as 10,000 evacuees had taken shelter. An exodus of hundreds of thousands left the city, many becoming refugees, finding shelter with nearby relatives or restarting their lives in states as far away as Massachusetts and Utah.

Experts who studied the disaster say the hurricane was more like four storms — at least — that battered the area in different ways. They say the flood protection system in New Orleans was flawed from the start because the model storm it was designed to stop was simplistic, and led to an inadequate network of levees, flood walls, storm gates and pumps. And experts say that understanding the failings is essential in planning the next generation of flood protection for a rebuilt New Orleans, and for systems nationwide.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown, was stripped of his post amid fears within the Bush administration that its delayed response to the disaster could do lasting damage to both President George W. Bush’s power and his legacy. But more important to some members of the administration, it dented the administration’s aura of competence. In the end, the federal government’s response was seen as too little and too late.

In the wake of the storm, the region’s grinding poverty, longstanding corruption and political ineptitude — particularly in the Big Easy — were exposed along with the inadequacies of federal, state and local agencies. Gradually, the region stabilized as aid was meted out and many of its residents returned.

Rulings on the Army Corps of Engineers

In November 2009, Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. of federal District Court ruled that poor maintenance of a major navigation channel, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet or MR-GO, by the Army Corps of Engineers led to some of the worst flooding after the hurricane. It was the first time that the government was held liable for any of the flooding that inundated the New Orleans area after Aug. 29, 2005, vindicating the long-held contention of many in the region that the flooding was far more than an act of God.

While the government is generally immune from flooding claims resulting from failures of flood control projects, Judge Duval ruled that damage related to the 76-mile channel was different because its purpose was navigation, not flood protection, even though it was lined with levees. The government appealed the decision, asking the full circuit to rehear the case.

“MR-GO’s size and configuration greatly aggravated the storm’s effects on the city and its environs,” wrote Judge Jerry E. Smith, writing for a three-judge panel, adding that the federal tort claims act “completely insulates the government from liability.”

In March, the same panel had ruled that the government was liable for some of the flooding, affirming the 2009 ruling by Judge Duval.

Flood Protection System Passes First Test

Seven years to the week after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was hit by another potentially deadly storm. Isaac was a Category 1 hurricane that caused severe flooding through a wide area of Louisiana and Mississippi.

On April 4, 2012, five former police officers were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in federal court in New Orleans for the shootings of six unarmed civilians, two of whom died, in the days after Hurricane Katrina, and for orchestrating a wide-ranging cover-up afterward.

The five former police officers were convicted in August 2011 on a range of counts including federal civil rights violations and lying to investigators.

On Sept. 4, 2005, as much of New Orleans still lay submerged in floodwaters, Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius, then sergeants, and Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon, then officers, jumped in a Budget rental truck and raced with other officers to the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans, responding to a distress call on the police radio.

As soon as they arrived, witnesses at the trial said, they began firing on members of the Bartholomew family, who were trying to find a grocery store. A 17-year-old family friend named James Brisette was killed, and four others were severely wounded.

The police then began to chase two brothers, Lance and Ronald Madison, who was 40 years old and mentally disabled, who were trying to get to the other side of the bridge. Ronald Madison was shot in the back by Officer Faulcon and then stomped on by Sergeant Bowen as he lay dying.

A cover-up began immediately and eventually grew to include made-up witnesses and a planted handgun. Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, a veteran investigator, was charged with overseeing much of the cover-up. He was sentenced to six years.

The four who were involved in the actual shooting were sentenced to terms ranging from 38 to 65 years.